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Castro valley woman sues waste management

CASTRO VALLEY, Calif. (KCBS) — Cindy Simons and her neighbors have paid for garbage service they have not received, according to a law suit filed against Waste Management in Alameda County Superior Court today.

The suit asks the nation’s largest trash collection company to return money paid by individual customers for services it has not rendered since locking out its union workers at the beginning of the month, according to Williams’ attorney, Micha Star Liberty.

“We would like the folks who prepaid for service to be reimbursed the monies that they paid to Waste Management,” Liberty told KCBS’s Mike Pulsipher.

Simons is seeking class action status for the suit, which according to a news release from Liberty’s firm, was filed “on behalf of thousands of East Bay consumers who paid their quarterly collection bills in a timely fashion, but then did not receive the service they paid for.”

A spokesman for Waste Management declined to comment on the case because he had not seen a copy of the lawsuit. He added the company had already indicated its willingness to address the issue of customer refunds.

The class action suit comes one week after the Oakland city attorney sued the company for breach of contract.

Star described her client as a retired librarian who “just got fed up with the rotting garbage in her driveway and on her sidewalks.”

The suit also seeks compensation for residents who have either hauled away trash or recycling on their own, or paid contractors to do so.

Negotiations aimed at resolving Waste Management’s contract dispute with Teamsters Local Union 70 resumed this afternoon under the auspices of a federal mediator and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums.